Lashing bars conventionally are used, often in connection with other fastening devices such as turn buckles, e.g. for securing standard shipping containers, stacked in tiers or layers to the deck of a transport ship. Lashing assemblies incorporating lashing bars conventionally are anchored between particularly-shaped anchor openings provided at the edges or corners of the containers, and fixed anchor points on the ship. Often the individual lashing assemblies extend obliquely from a container corner, to one of the fixed anchor points on the ship.
The invention relates to a lashing bar for latching into an anchoring opening in a container corner, the bar having at one end a hooking-in fitting having a pin extending substantially perpendicularly to the bar and a locking lug which is attached to the pin and which extends at least substantially in the longitudinal direction of the bar and from the pin in the direction away from the remote bar end, the maximum width of the locking lug being smaller than the maximum width of the anchoring opening of a bottom or lower container corner, and the distance between the free end of the locking lug and its opposite end or that surface of the pin which is remote from the free end of the locking lug being smaller than the height of the anchoring opening of a bottom or lower container corner, but large enough for the locking lugs to engage in the clamping position behind the edge zone of the end-face anchoring opening of a top or upper container corner.
Lashing bars of the kind specified are used to fasten containers to ships' decks; the hooking-in fitting of the lashing bar latch, for example, into the anchoring openings of the top container corner of the first layer of containers, and also into the anchoring openings of the bottom container corners of the second container layer resting on such container layer, and are then so connected via clamping elements, for example, turnbuckles, to anchoring points on deck that the lashing bars extend preferably at an angle of 45.degree., but generally over an angular range of 20.degree. to 50.degree. in relation to the vertical, so as to absorb in this way both vertical and horizontal forces. The anchoring of the containers by such obliquely extending lashing bars also produces a diagonal stiffening of the container frames, so that they can be loaded with considerable forces operating in parallel with the standing plane.
The anchoring openings in the bottom container corners and the lateral anchoring openings in the top container corners which open outwardly of the container ends at the bottom corners, or outwardly of the container sides at the bottom corners, and those which open outwardly of the container sides at the top corners each have the same standarized shape and dimensions, namely the shape of a perpendicular rectangle with semi-circular ends, whose maximum nominal width is 51.00 mm. its maximum nominal height being 79.5 mm. The prior art lashing bars of the kind specified therefore have hooking-in fittings which are adapted to such anchoring aperture and whose locking lug engages, after the bar has been inserted and pivoted into the inclined clamping position, behind the edge zone of the anchoring opening, thus producing the positive connection between the lashing bar and the container.
In distinction from the anchoring openings of the aforementioned dimensions each of the anchoring openings (i.e. those which open outwardly of the container ends at the top corners provided on the end face of the top container corner is constructed for the engagement of crane hooks, and it has a shape and dimensions which differ from the other anchoring apertures, but which are also standardized, namely substantially the shape of a square with a semi-circular lower end and a slightly rounded top end, the maximum nominal width being 63.5 mm and the maximum nominal height 73.0 mm. Due to the greater width of these anchoring openings in comparison with the anchoring openings of the bottom container corners and the lateral anchoring openings of the top container corners, when the hooking-in fitting of a lashing bar is applied which is designed for the narrower anchoring openings and the bar is pivoted into the clamping position, the wall of the opening is engaged-behind slightly, but not adequately, by the locking lug, even if the locking lug is so long that it must be inserted in the diagonal of the wider anchoring opening. In practice, therefore, the prior art lashing bars of the kind specified are unsuitable for use with the end-face anchoring openings of the top container corners, or the anchoring obtained is very unreliable.